Ravenscraft strikes twice in Michaelhouse’s victory over Hilton
Haydn Ravenscraft made a spectacular debut, scoring a brace, to help Michaelhouse record a thrilling 4-2 win over Hilton College on the Mansergh Astro on Saturday.
The visitors were somewhat inconsistent at the recent Michaelhouse Hockey Tournament, but finished on a high with a 2-1 win over Maritzburg College in their final outing. They carried that winning form into their match against Hilton.
“We scored four goals against a really good team,” Michaelhouse coach Nick Bérichon told SuperSport Schools News, “so definitely happy with that.
“We’ve got some work to do in deep defence still. But two young boys have made their debut, and one of them [Haydn Ravenscraft] got two goals. So just super happy for him and super happy for the rest of the boys.”
Michaelhouse and Hilton produced a goalless first chukka. However, it wasn’t due to a lack of trying; it was simply because their respective defences were on top of their game. In the second chukka, though, Hilton drew first blood after seven minutes through Santiago Matroos when they pierced Michaelhouse’s defence with a well-worked field goal.
Michaelhouse thought they had scored a spectacular equaliser through a blazing tomahawk shot from Haydn Ravenscraft soon after, but the umpire had spotted something that wasn’t to his liking, and it didn’t count.
The visitors, who went to the break trailing, returned the same personnel to the field for the second half, but sticking to their game plan began to pay off. Bérichon’s team talk at the break had struck a chord, and they reacted to it with an equaliser through Henry Yeadon within two minutes of the restart.
Ravenscraft next announced himself to first team hockey with a strike to put Michaelhouse in the lead a few minutes later. Hilton came steaming back and levelled matters when Santiago Matroos fired in his second from a penalty corner just before the end of the chukka.
“We’ve been dominating a lot of games that we’ve been playing, but haven’t been clinical at the end [of the pitch]. I thought it was going to be the same today,” Bérichon admitted. He needn’t have worried.
His charges dispelled those fears with a third goal. That strike, by Henry Love, followed a great display of teamwork and persistence in the face of some great defending by Hilton, with just under eight minutes left in the contest.
Composure and discipline were two of the most important areas of focus for Michaelhouse in the lead-up to Saturday’s big derby showdown. At times, it had let them down in some of their earlier outings, but against Hilton, on the most adrenaline-filled stage, they passed both tests.
Hilton threw everything at Michaelhouse in the wake of conceding a third goal, but the visitors’ defence was equal to the challenge, and they threatened with some penetrating counterattacks.
With three minutes remaining, they drove the final nail into the coffin with a fourth goal, Ravenscroft’s second, in a memorable debut.
RESULT
Hilton College 2-4 Michaelhouse
